CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: If you want to avoid getting old, behave like an immature ... trends now
Kathy Burke: Growing Up
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The Bay
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The comedian Kathy Burke doesn't tiptoe around delicate topics. Instead she puts on her bovver boots and starts stomping.
She thinks anyone who lies about their age is 'a bit pathetic actually', and insists she'll never have plastic surgery, 'cos where does that end? Madonna!'
But even she was deluding herself a little, as she faced up to being 58 on Kathy Burke: Growing Up (Ch4).
When she was a wild young woman, she said, senility began at 40, and anyone approaching 60 was pretty much decrepit.
Now, she says hopefully, you can be in your prime for decades longer. Getting old is optional till well after 80.
The comedian Kathy Burke (right) doesn't tiptoe around delicate topics. Instead she puts on her bovver boots and starts stomping
She thinks anyone who lies about their age is 'a bit pathetic actually', and insists she'll never have plastic surgery, 'cos where does that end? Madonna!'
I'm a few weeks senior to Kathy, and I've got sad news for her.
Millennials don't only regard our generation as dinosaurs — they assume that by 58, we're functionally extinct.
Proof of that was on show in Interior Design Masters this week, when two youthful contestants were challenged to decorate an apartment for 'a mature older couple' — in their 40s.
Host Alan Carr made it sound like a remit for stairlifts and a live-in nurse.
You can forget the adage that 'life begins at 40'.
In this youth-obsessed culture, life is all over at 40.
The only effective response is to behave like a Burke: 'The older I get, the more immature I'm becoming,' she said.
'I like being naughty — it's seen as eccentric when you're older. Do what you want, and try not to get arrested.'
Exploring some of the stranger ways people can keep themselves young, Burke met Mistress Sofia, who tops up her pension by working as a dominatrix — in her 70s!
Sofia's dungeon was stocked with racks of handcuffs, a school desk and cane, and a leather-clad whipping table — hand-built for her by one of her
